Bordeaux Housewives. Daisy Waugh
a frightened nun…And there is Emma –
Emma is knee-to-knee, leg-to-leg, not with Horatio, thank God, but with Jean Baptiste on her other side. Her smooth, thin brown hand is gently caressing his inner thigh, and it’s clear – impressively clear, Maude can’t help noticing – that Jean Baptiste is more than happy with the situation. Maude stays under the table, transfixed. Emma’s smooth, thin brown hand works its way to his belt buckle, and then his flies…
‘Are you all right down there, Maude?’ Emma calls out. Maude jumps. Jean Baptiste jumps. He pushes Emma’s hand away.
‘What? I’m – er. I’m – Oh, fine!’ Maude bumps her head on the bottom of the table as she resurfaces. ‘Sorry. Napkin,’ she says, holding it up and smiling idiotically. ‘Dropped my napkin.’ She rubs her head and stares, first at Jean Baptiste, who looks away, clearly embarrassed, as he should be, thinks Maude furiously. The traitor! And then at Emma, who stares right back at her, raises one fine eyebrow, and grins.
At some point towards the end of the main course David leaves the table, and a short peace falls; a chance, at last, for somebody else to get a word in. There is a long pause, filled with pleasant silence; the sound of the crickets and the river below – and it seems that nobody has much they want to talk about, after all. Timothy and Mme Bertinard tuck methodically into yet more lobster. Emma and Jean Baptiste continue with whatever they may or may not be doing under the table – Maude longs to take another look, but daren’t. Monsieur Bertinard gazes at his small, stubby fingers and wallows in the glamour of his surroundings…And Horatio gazes blankly into space. Seated between Emma, who is ignoring him, and Daffy, who has so far been too intimidated by him to do anything but nod, the look of resigned boredom has settled like mud on his face. Maude has been trying to catch his eye for ages – ever since she spotted what was going on under the table, but it seems nothing can quite shake him from his torpor.
It is Daffy, surprisingly, who proves least able to deal with the silence. ‘I must say, Emma,’ she blurts out, blushing into the moonlight as she does so, ‘this is the most super mayonnaise.’ It’s the first comment she’s volunteered all evening. ‘Will you tell me – would you mind ever so much – I’d be much obliged. What have you put in it?’
‘Yes, it’s good, isn’t it?’ murmurs Emma, wrinkling her pretty nose. ‘You must ask Mathilde, Duffy, darling. Daffy. Sorry. Ask Mathilde if you want to know how to do it. She’s the cook. I only eat the food.’ (Not strictly true, Maude thinks irrelevantly. Emma Rankin may serve some of the best food in Southern France, but Maude, for one, has never witnessed her swallow a mouthful. All Emma ever does is smoke.)
‘Oh, what a shame,’ Daffy sighs, immediately defeated. ‘Well, not to worry. It’s jolly tasty. And it’s so kind of you to have us here in your super home…And then to give us this tasty mayonnaise…I was only wondering if she hadn’t popped in the teeniest smidgen of saffron?’
‘When Mathilde brings out the cheese we can ask her,’ says Emma, waving a spare, thin wrist. Getting bored. ‘I’m sure she’ll be delighted.’
‘Excusez-moi,’ Jean Baptiste says, leaning across the table. ‘Vous parlez de la mayonnaise?’
Daffy goggles at him, as she’s been struggling not to do all evening. His sexy French presence, just his sitting there, almost opposite her, has been difficult enough for Daffy to deal with serenely. Now he’s gazing at her with those hazel-green eyes, and the crickets are singing, and he’s gabbling away in French, and she can’t understand a word. Not a word…And he really is, she thinks, really, truly – outrageously – gorgeous. She glances automatically at Timothy, as if for rescue or permission to speak, but he’s chewing away on the lobster, raspberry lips smeared with mayonnaise. He shows no sign of interceding. So she turns back to Jean Baptiste. ‘Err. Mayonnaise,’ says Daffy, smiling, nodding her head. ‘Mayonnaise!’ she says again, with fresh confidence, and then, with a French accent, as if it might somehow help: ‘Verrrry verrrry tasty!’
He nods. ‘Je suis absolument d’accord. C’est délicieux, n’est-ce pas? C’est superbe. Et moi aussi, je me demandais qu’est-ce que Emma avait mis dedans. Mais, alors, vous avez suggéré le safran si j’ai bien compris?’
‘Er. Crikey…’ Daffy snorts. She laughs, actually, which takes her husband faintly by surprise. ‘Pardon, Monsieur. Sorry! Sorry. But, I mean, absolutely – non understandie!’
‘“Non understandie”?’ mutters Emma, not much appreciating Jean Baptiste’s switch in attention, nor the peculiar but undeniable cuteness of this new female impostor at her table. ‘Not sure I understandie myself!’ She sniggers softly, hoping to catch someone’s eye.
But Daffy doesn’t seem to hear her. ‘– Anyway, I think it’s très bon mayonnaise. Oui?’ she perseveres. ‘Is that what we’re saying?’
Timothy smirks. Dabs his napkin on his greasy chin. ‘Unfortunately Daphne can’t speak French,’ he informs the table. ‘She hasn’t the faintest idea what the young man is talking about. Do you, Daphne?’
‘Well –’ Daffy shrinks a little. She can hear the small, fat Frenchman with the double chins, Monsieur Bertinard, chortling merrily. ‘I’m sorry,’ Daffy says. ‘Muchas…pardon.’ She smiles apologetically at Jean Baptiste. ‘…I bought some tapes, you see,’ she adds feebly, ‘only I haven’t exactly had time…’
‘I am saying,’ begins Jean Baptiste slowly, kindly, and with his smiling eyes turning her heart, body and mind into a warm pool of useless embarrassment, ‘le safran in the mayonnaise. All the evening I am trying so hard to find what it is, this small taste. I am tasting, tasting, thinking…But of course! It is le safran! Mais c’est tellement subtil, n’est-ce pas? You are very clever. You must to be a fantastic cook yourself, I am correct?’ He has a soft voice, low and confiding, a way of making her feel that they – he and she and their joint appreciation of small amounts of saffron – are the only beings in this world that really matter. He smiles at her, a friendly smile, strangely intimate, directed at her and at her alone; a smile which annoys Timothy and Emma about equally, and which leaves Daffy so confused she has to grasp hold of the table to steady herself.
Daffy gazes at him hopelessly. ‘…Muchas pardon…’ she says again. Utterly unable to come up with anything better.
Timothy smiles, lays down his napkin. ‘Young man,’ he says to Jean Baptiste, slowly, and unnecessarily loudly. ‘In case you hadn’t guessed, my wife doesn’t actually have A CLUE what you’re banging on about!’
‘Oh I think she does,’ interrupts Horatio irritably. Feeling sorry for Daffy suddenly. It’s the first time he’s said anything in ages. ‘Do you speak good French, Timothy? I don’t think I’ve heard you speak a word of French all evening.’
Timothy eyes Horatio, picks up his napkin again and takes another dab before replying. He is not much accustomed to anyone talking back to him. ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘But I’m not the one wanting to buy a hotel in the middle of a French village, now, am I? How’s she going to run a hotel, Horatio – you tell me – if all she can say to her customers is “no understandie”? Frankly,’ he chuckles, shakes his head, ‘it’s not going to get her very far, is it?’
‘No, but Timothy, I’m going to learn,’ Daffy bursts out before Horatio has a chance to continue defending her. ‘Of course I will. I mean, I’m going to work really hard at it. Especially now I’ve been here and seen how lovely everything is…It’s all I’m going to concentrate on when I go back to London.’
Timothy gazes at her pink face, so full of hope and enthusiasm. She looks carefree suddenly; possibly even a little drunk.
‘…Go back to London?’ he repeats slowly, smiling, as if he didn’t quite understand. ‘But Daphne. Who ever said anything about going back?’
‘I’m